TV: NBC offers scripted chills

  Like the Meatloaf song says, two out of three ain’t bad.
  NBC sent out three episodes of “Fear Itself” (10 p.m. Thursday, KVBC-TV, Channel 3), the network’s new horror/suspense anthology series, but they came too late to get any kind of review in my column, aside from recommending that you watch it.
  Now, I can tell you that two of those — this week’s premiere, about four stranded criminals and strange doings in a remote fort, and episode three, about a serial killer who trades bodies with a family man after they both have near-death experiences — are fairly entertaining. The other — about a private detective (Eric Roberts) on a stakeout in a haunted house — was just a little too Eric Roberts-y. Which is weird, because normally that’s a good thing.
  The 13-episode series is a continuation of “Masters of Horror,” which ran for two seasons on Showtime. The episodes will feature work by writers Victor Salva (“Jeepers Creepers”), Steve Niles ("30 Days of Night") and Sean Hood (“Halloween: Resurrection”) and directors John Landis (“An American Werewolf in London”), Darren Bousman (“Saw II,” “Saw III” and “Saw IV”) and Ronny Yu (“Freddy vs. Jason,” “Bride of Chucky”).
  I’ve always been kind of lukewarm about anthology series, because the episodes almost always rely on the “gotcha,” that last-second twist of an ending that is so ridiculously hard to pull off. And “Fear Itself’s” first three “gotchas” are hit-and-miss. But given all the cheap reality shows the networks are throwing out this summer, it’s still worth a look. Even if the average episode is less frightening than some of the auditions for “Last Comic Standing.”